Toyota Sued Over Cookie Decline Button That Allegedly Did Nothing

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Toyota faces a proposed class action over website tracking.

Plaintiff says declining cookies changed nothing on the site.

The claim leans on a wiretapping law written in 1967.

Clicking “decline” on a cookie banner carries an implied promise that the site will stop following you around. A new lawsuit claims Toyota’s American website treated that click as a formality.

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The proposed class action, filed last week at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses the automaker of tracking Toyota.com visitors after they rejected third-party cookies through the consent banner the site itself put in front of them. Lead plaintiff Brittany Conner says tracking technology landed on users’ devices regardless of what they chose, handing third parties their browsing activity, device details, and online identifiers for targeted advertising.

Read: Toyota Admits The New RAV4 Went Too Far On Screens, And Even China Agrees

At the center of the complaint is fingerprinting, a method of identifying an individual by assembling device and browsing characteristics into a signature unique enough to follow across the web, no cookie required. According to the filing, Toyota deployed those tools after visitors selected “decline” on the banner.

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Toyota is far from the only company dealing with this kind of issue. The suit is built around the California Invasion of Privacy Act, a law enacted in 1967 to address wiretapping and phone surveillance, which plaintiffs’ firms are now repurposing to target modern website tracking. While this act was conceived decades before the World Wide Web, it’s proven effective enough that more than 800 CIPA suits were filed in 2025 alone, reports Fox Business.

Toyota isn’t the first big name swept up in this, and it won’t be the last. Forbes Media settled a similar “trap and trace” claim for $10 million two months ago, while the Los Angeles Times handed over $3.85 million to make its own version of the problem disappear

Pacific Trial Attorneys, the firm representing Conner, didn’t respond to Fox Business’ request for comment. Toyota has stayed quiet as well.

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